[crossfire] GTK2-v2 Client new layout defined (gtk-v1)

[Kevin R. Bulgrien]

> There is a simple reason it is not advertised on the web site: the
> client is still in development. You are able to connect to a server and
> actually play the game, but some gui elements do not yet work (click on
> an element and nothing happens), and error handling is almost absent
> (failure to connect to server, or have the connection break ==> client
> just exits). Also, it still runs quite slowly on machines without
> hardware accelerated graphics operations -- in fact, currently you
> basically cannot play on such machines...

Hmm...  So then the mumbler was really just detracting from my feeble
attempts to work on fixing what I felt like moaning about.  Ok... I get it.
 
> > I pulled down ant (87 MB with deps), and still didn't have a clue
> > where to go from there.
> 
> Thanks for pointing out this issue. I've now added a few lines to the
> README file about how to compile the client. Basically: run "ant" in the
> jxclient directory. This creates the file jxclient.jar. Run this file as
> "java -jar jxclient.jar".

Nope, that make huge assumptions.  All I get is an exception when I do
that.  On the other client,  it has ./configure that has a chance of showing
me maybe I don't have all the requirements installed, which I suppose
has something to do with ant croaking when I try to start it. 
 
> > For now, I'll stick with using a geeky client rather than none at all.
> 
> Better yet: figure out how to make it work, then fix the documentation;)
> Or at least file a bug report so somebody else can fix it. Just
> declining and not telling anything does not enable us to fix issues...

Why do you suppose I'm even trying it?  And that is what I'm doing about
the GTK2 client.  If you read the top of the thread, I wasn't the groaner,
and in fact am doing something about what I did groan about.

> > What's with java projects anyway? Gridarta doesn't release jars, I
> > don't see one for jxclient. You have to get them off-project. I guess
> > if you're not in, you're out.
> 
> For Gridarta it is for the same reason: the project has started from the
> sources of both the Crossfire and the Daimonin Java map editors. They
> did share a common code base but have been developed separately for
> quite a while. Gridarta's goal was to merge both code bases to bundle
> the development resources of both projects, effectively helping both
> projects.
> 
> We decided not to officially release binaries for Gridarta because we
> thought the editors might be (very) unstable during the merging process.
> Until today, the merging is still in progress (see
> http://gridarta.sourceforge.net/dev/mergeStats).
> 
> To the off-site download place: It was introduced because some people
> couldn't compile the editor. (In fact, I did compile Gridarta for eracc.
> He then figured that it could be helpful for other to get at the
> pre-compiled editor as well, so he hade it available on his site.)
> 
> As far as I know, currently all people who are (semi-)actively using the
> editor can compile it from the sources. Now, creating a new release
> takes me at least 30 minutes. Therefore I prefer spending this time into
> code improvements. That means I update the pre-compiled binary only very
> infrequently (less than once per month, almost always only when somebody
> complains that it is way outdated...)

Don't know what semi-actively is, but I sure have a lot of commits in svn...
and don't know how to compile it.  I can learn anything, but if I can't even
get it compiled, and can compile something else... my time is better spent
on the one that builds.

$ pwd
/home/data/svn/gridarta
$ ant
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/tools/ant/launch/Launcher

Ok, so Googling on that turns up a suggestion to try:

$ ant --execdebug
exec "/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_08/bin/java" -classpath "/usr/bin/build-classpath: error: JVM_LIBDIR /usr/lib/jvm-exports/java-gcj does not exist or is not a directory" -Dant.home="/usr/share/ant" -Dant.library.dir="/usr/share/ant/lib" org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher -cp ""
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/tools/ant/launch/Launcher

I'd add that to the README, BTW.  I suppose I could dig around to see why
said directory is not on my system.  Maybe I picked the wrong options
when I pulled down ant.

> That said, even though we do not yet provide pre-compiled binaries for
> jxclient or Gridarta, feedback is always highly welcome. Both feedback
> about what needs to be improved/changed/implemented to make the
> application actually useful, and feedback about bugs/crashes/etc. Even
> feedback that you just use it without problems is useful (since it might
> accelerate further development ;)).

Been there done that.  It is a very cool tool, and I've posted several things
to sourceforge, except probably didn't say how nice it was to use compared
to what I used to use to edit maps.